


Late Night Drive

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [39]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Farm Headcanons, M/M, Profanity, Retribution Spoilers, established relationships - Freeform, reference platonic chargestep, referenced improper drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22276000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: Ricardo and Chen take a detour on their drive back.
Relationships: Ortega/Steel (Fallen Hero)
Series: How Not to Fall [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1327892
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Late Night Drive

“Jesus,” Which wasn’t a bad opening, all things considered. The sigh from the passenger’s seat was long and Ricardo caught the movement of Chen pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jesus Ricardo,”

The quick flashes of light, shadow, light as streetlamps whizzed by outside threw everything inside the car into distorted relief. Almost leeching the color. Setting a fast tempo that Ricardo could feel keying him up inside. The radio was blasting some terrible pop song and the mumble singing was grating on his nerves in just the right way.

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Ricardo tightened his grip on the steering wheel and swerved into the next left lane, cutting off a taxi with a particularly loud horn. Leather creaked under his fingers. “Let him run in on his own to get killed in a fucking blaze of glory? Or no. Now the plan is to wait around for this bitch and her little pets to waltz in and put guns to our heads. May as well walk into Hollow Ground’s personal penthouse and start pointing out preferred dumping grounds for him to leave my body,” What were they thinking?

Just waiting? For what? A polite knock on the door and written request for the return of stolen. Ricardo clenched his teeth and didn’t let himself finish the thought. No, they couldn’t wait. They had to move quickly before Regina could really get a chance to organize herself. Hit her hard. Hit her fast. Make her go on the defensive. Make her the one who was panicked for options and then don’t give her any time to make a choice. Control the flow of whatever this was.

He pulled to a stop at a red light, watching the cars whip through the intersection.

“You don’t get it,” not the best choice of words, but they were out and Chen was only half glaring but there was no real heat in it. “Torture? Doesn’t cover it. And he was in there for years. Years being. Being fucked with and experimented on. And believing the things they told him because he couldn’t be sure I wasn’t the one who sent him there. And why shouldn’t he? He was stuck there because,”

“Not because of you,” Chen cut in, sharper and harder than a kick to the ribs.

“Don’t give me that. If he had been able to trust me back then I could have done something. I would have,” he paused, the words catching in his throat. He would have done anything if he’d known what the alternative was going to be. What the reality was going to be. “He wouldn’t have had to go back,”

“Or you would have done something stupid and gotten both of you killed,” the voice came from a thousand miles away and just because it was right didn’t make it any kinder to hear. “Just like you’re probably going to do now,”

The light turned green.

“You didn’t see.” Zips of electrical energy were pooling around his fingertips, desperate to be let out. His spine ached with it. “You didn’t see the,” stomach dropping low and fury rising to match it. Nowhere to go but build up. Up up. God fucking damn it he was going to have nightmares about those “Fucking pictures,”. It had taken Daniel practically picking him up off the ground and the security guard assuring him that she wasn’t in the building at the time anyway and Ricardo had still accidentally fried every electronic he touched for the rest of the day. Which reminded him that he needed to send a check to the hotel for their security system getting blasted. “He was there because he thought if anyone knew he was a regene that they would send him back. Because he couldn’t trust any one of us,”

A sharp merge back into the faster lane. There was a bit too long of a pause from the passenger’s side.

“Wei?” a half hearted push—still too tense behind the teeth. Slight squeaking from the car accompanied Chen’s shrug. His hand dropped from his temples to rub over his mouth before coming to rest alongside the other in his lap.

“I would never have,”

“I know you wouldn’t have! You would never send someone to,” the shudder ran up his spine and settled between his temples. “Even if you didn’t know what they were really doing there…I know you didn’t hate him the way Richard was afraid you did,” that hit a chord. A loud one. Chen’s face tightened and then softened again.

“I’m not proud of how I treated him back then,” it was a heavy whisper. Filled with sharp, hard edges. “I never would have,” he repeated, and Ricardo couldn’t be sure if he was the one it was directed at. 

“Apparently you could have treated him like your best friend and it wouldn’t have mattered—he still wouldn’t have trusted you,” too much bitterness in that. Too much. Felt it burning in the back of his throat like stale vomit. He felt Chen’s eyes on him and stared out the windshield. Another red light. Always fucking red lights when all he wanted to do was floor it. “You know he doesn’t want her dead?”

“He claims he doesn’t,” Chen said slowly. Clearly not entirely believing it either, and he didn’t even know half the things Regina had done.

“If she’d been in that hotel I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself,” Ricardo heard himself saying the words but didn’t really register that they were out of his throat until silence made its way back into the car. He let it. Chen had done necessary things before and had never once said anything about the necessities Ricardo himself had taken.

Then, finally. “That bad?”

“Worse,” Another pause. He shook his head as if that could do something to clear away the images threatening to spill into his head. Regenes had always. Always reminded him of sick, creeping things in the dark. Ghoul faced nightmares out of his childhood imagination. Punching up from their shallow graves with their blue grey skin and dead eyes and unstopping resolve. They went and went until there was nothing left of them to go. Dead things. And it hadn’t been hard to separate Sidestep from that pack, with his constant twitching and live wire, first taste of freedom, energy. But he’d been like that in the pictures. Withered and broken and like someone had dug him up from a shallow grave and were doing things to his corpse for fun.

Green light. Ricardo slammed the accelerator.

There had been scribbled notes in the margins of the pictures that Regina had been showing the senator. Ricardo hadn’t been able to stop the morbid curiosity and had zoomed in enough on one to make out shaky chemical equations along with the suggestion to up a dosage or two ‘to see if they can make him stop that damned screaming.’ Chen made a noise in the back of his throat. “He wanted to go back on his own. Not to kill her but to kill himself. And that’s all that waiting is going to accomplish. If we give him time to think about it, he’ll try to find a way to keep us out of it and let her kill him,”

“That’s why you kicked his ass?” Chen’s voice was steady. Even. Unfair if only because of the swell of nausea that rose up Ricardo’s throat.

“I thought he was,” Couldn’t finish it. He’d wanted that fight ever since Richard had told him he never trusted him. Wanted that fight because he was hurt and he wanted Richard to know that he was hurt and. Maybe it was selfish of him. But he hadn’t known. The light was yellow, rail tracks coming up and the lights flashing and Ricardo wanted to gun through before the fucking slow goddamn train but the car ahead of him braked early. He laid on the horn and ignored Chen wincing. The driver ahead of him flipped him off. “He needed some fucking sense knocked into him. I’m not going to let him die again. And I’m not going to sit around waiting for her to come to us,”

“Alright,” Chen raised a hand in a peace offering. The train horn blared and the infuriatingly slow cargo mover began chugging by. “Arguing about that gets us nowhere. I say defend, you say attack,” which they both knew was a deliberate over-simplification but. “Either way, we both know you’re going to support him, no matter what he chooses,”

“Now what is that supposed to mean?” a little pip of exasperation bleeding into his voice. Maybe more than a little.

Another shrug. This time with a slight head shake.

“It doesn’t mean anything Ricardo,” but Chen shifted his position slightly, giving Ricardo a better view of the back of his ear and bullshit, bullshit bull. Shit. The tone of voice alone was. “Watch the road once the train is gone, pedestrians are terrible on this part of town,”

“Fine. You’re pissed that I didn’t tell you about Mad Dog,” thankfully, at least those pieces slid neatly into place. Formed a neat little puzzle-map to help Ricardo know exactly where he was standing. It was just at the intersections of ‘You’re In’ and ‘Deep Shit’. If he angled it right, he might just be able to cut through the ‘The Clear’ alleyway. “But I couldn’t just,”

“Trust me either?” resigned sounding and Ricardo felt the blood leave his face for half a second before his rising blood pressure sent it rocketing back.

“What?”

“I was kidding,” Chen blinked at him and then apparently the expression on Ricardo’s face was enough to communicate how much he didn’t believe that. “I’m not upset that you kept it from me,” Chen corrected. Tried to correct. He’d turned to face Ricardo briefly an then turned sharply back. It was enough to see his expression even if Chen was now either avoiding making eye contact or suddenly fiercely interested in the Toyota truck waiting next to them at the light. He was doing that thing with his eyebrows where they told the truth even when he didn’t.

“Yeah, and I’m the Pope,” Ricardo felt his anger simmering away just below the surface of his skin, little zips of electricity wriggling along and making him drum his fingers impatiently. The buildup of energy set his teeth on edge. They didn’t have time for this either. He needed to get back to his office and bring up everything his contacts had managed to find out about the Farm. “You know I would have told you as soon as I thought it was safe to,” which wasn’t. Entirely true. It didn’t feel like it was entirely true, and Ricardo wasn’t sure what to do with that information. He would lie if Richard asked him to. He knew he would, because Richard had asked him to lie and Ricardo had.

“It’s not about–,” a harder sigh and this one sounded more genuine. “I understand that you were protecting him. Are protecting him. It’s okay,” something curved in Chen’s words that made Ricardo’s fore-brain sit up a little straighter. The gathering silence flung it’s arms out and wrapped them around their shoulders. The train kept moving along. The light stayed red. Ricardo turned off the radio. The silence stayed red for a few more seconds. And then Chen sucked in air between his teeth like he was trying to pull his words back into his chest. “Fine. I am pissed about Richard,”

“I knew it,” Ricardo couldn’t stop it from coming out and so was forced to grimace at himself in the faint reflection of the dashboard. There was a very loud and very obvious ‘but’ clinging to the end of Chen’s sentence, waiting to be spoken. It didn’t come. At least, it didn’t come from Chen.

“But?”

Chen’s mouth twisted down into a frown, the scars pulling in off directions making the expression more extreme. It took a car honk to force Ricardo into realizing that he’d been staring at Chen’s lips while the train had moved on. Green light, go. “But I can be mad about that later.” End of sentence. End of discussion.

Ha. Good luck with that, buddy. The little annoying bug in the back of Ricardo’s brain had scuttled over “You’re mad about Richard…but it’s not about the Mad Dog thing?” because there was a difference there. Something inside him hoped that Chen wasn’t actually making a distinction. Without realizing what his body was doing, Ricardo turned left instead of right, heading for the office rather than Chen’s apartment. Driving to work with muscle memory and only one eye actually on the road.

“What it is, is nothing important. Forget I said anything, I’m just overthinking things,” dismissive but his eyes were still watching out the window.

“It’s the thing with Daniel, isn’t it?” They hit another goddamn fucking red light and Ricardo braked just hard enough to make them both rock forward in their seats.

“No,” A bad lie. Maybe only half of one.

“It’s because I didn’t tell you I knew he was a regene?” Chen shook his head and opened his mouth but Ricardo cut him off, “Is it because I didn’t tell you that you were right when you told me you thought something was off about him?” because Chen hadn’t quite made the accusation. It had been weeks ago and Chen had haltingly admitted that he’d done some digging after heartbreak. That he might have found out some things about Sidestep. But nothing solid. No real evidence. And he apparently hadn’t been willing to come forward and tell Ricardo what he’d seen or how he knew, only that he had reason to think Ricardo should be careful around him. Hedging his bets because he knew Ricardo hadn’t known back then.

And because he hadn’t said ‘hey, Richard isn’t human’ Ricardo didn’t feel like it was lying to keep his lips sealed and not say anything to confirm or deny the accusations Chen hadn’t made.

“I never said it like that. But no. Seriously, it’s nothing you…he said something when you were in the kitchen, but it’s nothing,”

“If it was actually nothing, you wouldn’t be trying not to answer,” Ricardo shot back and Chen winced. Hardly visible unless you were waiting for it. Like getting water from a damn stone sometimes.

“It’s stupid of me,” Chen resisted, a shallow last attempt.

“Bullshit,” empty airwaves. He saw Chen drag a hand through his hair. The light turned green. “What did he say? Wei?”

“He only,” apparently a dead end, because Chen’s attention turned from the window outside to his hands in his lap. A surprisingly small gesture. “He said that he told you everything the night those heavy monsoons were flooding everything,” not phrased as a question but Ricardo realized after a moment that Chen was waiting for confirmation. “When you had dinner together,”

“Uh, yeah?” the sudden gear shift had unseated a good amount of his rage and was replacing it with slow blinking confusion.

“That was the night you came to see me, wasn’t it?” another long pause. Another request for affirmation.

“I did,” he found himself hesitating, not sure what road Chen was going down and not entirely sure he wanted to see what was waiting at the end of it. “I remember my head was spinning,” it had felt like the world’s worst migraine had gotten married to a nasty hangover and they were using Ricardo’s brain as a honeymoon spot.

“You were a mess,” not unkind, which was nicer than what it could have been.

“Hey,” Ricardo made a face of mock offense and shoved Chen’s shoulder. Light. Glad that this wasn’t some heavy lecture and instead was just going to be some sort of buffer zone until Chen realized they were headed for headquarters. “The term is ‘roguishly disheveled’ and you know I look fantastic wet,”

“Yeah, but you know that too,” Chen muttered and Ricardo almost took his eyes off the road to see if what he had heard was right. But Chen was already moving on. “You looked like a drowned rat,” Ricardo hoped that was a smile starting to show up. He couldn’t get a good enough look.

“It was storming out!”

“And you’d been self medicating,” nope. Not a smile, then. Grimace. And not as light as Ricardo had been hoping for. No tripping over the term anymore, because that was another fight waiting to start. “And even that wasn’t why you were,” he trailed, voice growing both more grim and softer. Ricardo made the final turn towards headquarters and from the way Chen shifted he could tell the location change had finally been noticed.

It wasn’t remarked on. “I wasn’t that bad,” Ricardo felt like he had to say something to defend himself. He’d felt like shit, sure, but he hadn’t looked like terrible, had he? Wet and maybe a little unfocused from the painkillers, but he hadn’t taken enough to make a fool of himself.

“You were. He broke your heart, Ricardo,”

Red light. Slammed the brakes. Tires squealed. That’s what this was about? He still thought?

“I told you Richard and I weren’t–,”

“The two of you didn’t have to be in love. He still broke your heart,” Chen shifted gears again and drove a semi-truck through whatever Ricardo’s mind was trying to come up with. “And you decided to come to me,” and whatever the hell was going on with his tone of voice made the built up adrenaline in Ricardo’s system try to twist his lungs into a pretzel.

“I did, yeah. What? You’re pissed because I came over?” the tension had moved from his lungs and was starting to do a piece of performative art with his heart. Because it had been the morning after that, when Chen had finally said something. Followed up the first hit that Ricardo had taken from Richard with a punch to the back of the head. Then Chen had. And they had. Together. And. “Okay. Okay so you’re upset because you felt like you had to…before you wanted to?” his stomach twisted. “Or? What am I missing here, what did I do wrong?” Green light. Chen made a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” tight teeth but the frustration wasn’t directed at him. “I told you that I’m being stupid about this,” just a block away. Ricardo ran the next red and barely gave the gate arm enough time to raise before he sped into his parking spot. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Chen repeated, quieter this time. He unclicked his seat belt even before Ricardo had a chance to switch the engine off. The car door swung open and the car creaking with released tension as Chen stood up echoed through the mostly empty parking garage. “You had your heart broken and you came to me because you knew I wouldn’t turn you away,” he said it quietly, as though he didn’t want his words bouncing around off the concrete. Almost an afterthought as he shut the door.

Leaving a partly stunned and fully bewildered Ricardo sitting in the driver’s seat. And then all of his limbs reacted at once, getting him out of the car as quickly as humanly possible and out into the same space as Chen.

“Wait,” except for the seat belt tangling him back. “Hold on,” He could hear heavy footsteps moving away from the car as he struggled with the belt and briefly thought about ripping it off. “Fucking, espérate you ass,”

“You knew I would let you in to vent and rant at me and that I wouldn’t ask any uncomfortable questions,” no bitterness anywhere in the words. Not so much as one errant sour note. Which was somehow making it sound so much worse. Resigned and even. “And I did. And didn’t. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m overthinking things,” finally the belt lock clicked and Ricardo had to catch himself from tripping out the door. Kicked it shut and turned to see Chen with his arms crossed over his chest, waiting by the elevators. He hadn’t pressed a call button yet. “Why are we here Ricardo?”

“Because I left my office light on,” he sounded like an asshole. “You still haven’t explained why you’re upset. And if it’s upsetting you, it’s not stupid,” cliché maybe, but he meant it. Ricardo reached up and placed a hand on Chen’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “I want to know,”

A deep sigh. Chen pressed the call button and sucked his teeth for a long second. Ricardo let his hand follow the curve of Chen’s back until it rested against the center plane, flat and steady. Pretty solid contrast to the fact that if Chen said he felt like he had to rush into something with him, he was going to. “Fuck,” he muttered softly. The elevator dinged its arrival and the doors slid back noiselessly. The pleasant female voice announced it was going up. Chen paused for a second before walking in, forcing Ricardo’s hand to slip away. He blocked the sensor with his hand, leaving the doors open for Ricardo.

He stepped into the box. And after what felt like an eternity the doors shut and the humming mechanics began to lift them. “It’s going to sound like I’m accusing you of something,” Chen grumbled. “Which I’m not,”

“Wei, for Christ’s sake,”

“Are you settling for me?”

Well. That wasn’t what. “No?” couldn’t help the tightness in his throat. Couldn’t miss the way Chen flinched. “Hey. No. Absolutely not,” panic was tying its running shoes and doing its stretches. He watched his own hands reach up to cup Chen’s face. Chen didn’t pull away but didn’t lean into the touch either.

Ricardo didn’t even know where to begin with that one, buying time by stroking his thumb over one Chen’s broader scars. And then the smaller pieces lined up into the rest of the image. That because he couldn’t be with Richard he’d gone in for something that might make up for it. Right. Shit. Okay swallow something flavored like pride and, “I went over to your place that night because…,” harder to swallow than he’d been expecting “I knew I could fall apart there and still be alright. That you could see me being a fucking mess and,” not think less of him for it. “Because I’d be safe there,” and he’d ended up leaving the apartment the next. What? Late morning? Early afternoon? With the sparkly revelation that his other best friend had been keeping softer secrets from him. He shook his head, too many words getting caught in his throat. Quick change. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who settles for anything?”

Chen let his eyes slip shut, lips pressed into something narrow and grim. “I told you it–,”

“It’s not stupid but, Jesus,” Ricardo reached behind himself and nailed the button to keep the doors closed just as the elevator arrived at their floor. “I don’t do second best, Wei. Especially not when it comes to who I love,” which Chen was going to have some things to say about. Would have to wait to say some things about, because Ricardo had pulled him hard into a kiss. The body under his hands stiffened for a moment. Chen let the kiss happen but didn’t quite return it. “You’re not my second choice,” Ricardo whispered it against Chen’s mouth. Second time around, Chen responded slightly to the kiss, lips moving gently against Ricardo’s. After a moment Ricardo slid one of his hands around to hold the back of his neck and felt Chen relax a minor fraction. “I’ll be sure to make it obvious from now on,” he snuck his other hand down from Chen’s cheek to squeeze his other cheek. Chen exhaled through his nose and Ricardo let himself fold, leaning forward to press a smaller kiss onto the corner of Chen’s mouth. “I’m serious,”

“So am I,” voice still steady and smooth. “I’ve been that guy before,” and apparently Ricardo’s expression asked the question for him. “The place filler,” oh. Fucking ouch.

“That’s not what you are. God as my witness, that’s not what this is,”

“I’m not the sort of person you usually go for,” one last attempt, feeble and wavering. The issue wasn’t put to rest for certain because. Jesus. That was going to take some time. But it signaled that Chen was tired of dragging it out and just wanted to stop airing his personal anxieties for a moment. Ricardo was mostly willing to comply.

“Oh? And who do I usually go for? People who are say…dangerous? Intelligent? Beautiful? You fit the bill so far,” And while the ‘beautiful’ comment got a snort, Chen didn’t make a move when Ricardo stopped the half assed grope of his backside and trailed a hand around to his front, fingers slipping under the edge of his shirt.

“Women,” Chen said plainly and something inside Ricardo cursed loud enough to almost make it up to his lips. That had been the real revelation that Richard had brought up. Even if he wasn’t the right guy, he’d brought up the slightly vertigo inducing possibility that maybe there could be a right guy. Which had forced Ricardo into more than a few late night stare down sessions with his blank tv screen, trying to figure out what that even meant about him.

He still hadn’t figured it all out by the time Chen’s confession had happened, but it couldn’t have mattered less by that point. He’d got enough worked out to know he wasn’t about to let Chen slip through his fingers. 

“Well,” Ricardo drew out the word, hoping to get some extra seconds in for his brain to catch up. “It turns out not all of my metrics apply across the board,” which wasn’t nearly enough to cover that. “But maybe the man I am going in for could tell me about his own requirements? I assume the classics? Tall, dark and handsome?” 

“Those are good. Add stubborn and reckless and you’ll be getting somewhere,” a slight lilt to his voice. Alright, that was something. He could work with that. It looked for a moment like Chen was going to add something, but Ricardo cut him off.

“I could add those to mine, I guess. You cover the first three already,” another snort but this time when Ricardo pushed their lips together, Chen kissed back. Slowly, granted, but it was there. “And as for reckless,” he tapped his fingers against Chen’s abdomen. Slipping up. Up. Almost up to.

“There are cameras in here,” but Chen’s mouth was betraying him, twisting into an unbidden smirk.

Ricardo slid his hand back down an inch or so, playing with the edge of the fabric. “Gotcha. Not too reckless,”

“I’ve heard there aren’t any in your second office, though,”

“Oh you’ve heard very correctly,” he reached out behind himself to open the doors. “As it turns out, I was on my way there just now,”

**Author's Note:**

> I hate that I love Chen as much as I do and suck so bad at writing him


End file.
